Black Cat
by Shu of the Wind
Summary: In the fairy tales it's always the eldest who fails first. Sand Sibling-centric. COMPLETE!
1. i

_Hmmmm..._

_I have a feeling that this will eventually end up as a three-shot, with the Sand Siblings going in chronological order. Which means Kankurou will be next. Now that I've watched Shippuuden again, I have a new fondness for Kankurou. And I really wanted to see Konohamaru's butt kicked (frankly). He was really rude about Sakura. -_-_

_iStat:_

_Chapter Title: N/A  
Chapter Word Count: 994 (or thereabouts)  
Chapter Rating: PG. Sort of. Maybe PG-13._

_I was experimenting with style. And character. And stuffs._

_Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. If I did, Konan would be the main character._

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**black cat**  
**by shu of the wind**

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_Because fairy tales aren't a part of us._

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**1. Blonde**

When she is small, and Gaara hasn't yet been born, her hair is much lighter. Instead of golden-blonde, which was always the hair color of the heroine, it is shockingly white, enough to make her father ruffle it and tease her for being a ghost. He never frowns now, and there isn't the hardness in his eyes that she always remembers later. Or rather, it is there, but she is two and doesn't see it.

She only learns later that the heroine's hair is always a sheet of pure gold, because when she is small and Gaara hasn't yet been born, her mother changes it. Over and over again.

_Long ago, Temari, long, long ago, there was a girl with hair the same color as bright sunlight, and she was the hero of her village._

_But mama, she's always that way._

_Do you want her to be different?_

_...No._

When she starts to get older and realizes that her mother has lied, she can't work up the strength to be angry with her. Because by then her mama is dead, and Kankurou is wetting the bed at night, and _that thing_ is in the guest-house and it screams and it kills and it screams.

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**2. Alternatives**

She decides to become a shinobi when she turns five and it's been a year since Karura's death (_murder_) by the monster (_her brother_).

Karura had been a jounin before she married the Kazekage and pulled Temari into her lap for fairy tales. It is never talked about.

In Suna, a kunoichi is an aberration. They are not supposed to exist. Women live for children. (She doesn't like them.) They do not slit the throats of their enemies in the dark after a seduction. (Only once, and she hated his hands and his mouth every second he was near her.) They do not fight boy-men who hide in the shadows and nearly win. (She would have if she hadn't been fighting fair.) They don't kill. (She does.) And they know how to cook. (Kankurou is her housewife. They laugh about it after he makes something they'll all like.)

Kunoichi are wrong because the desert leaves no breathing room for them.

It has no room for monsters either. But the red one lives anyway.

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**3. Traditions**

On her mother's death day (January nineteenth, Gaara's birthday, the one they missed last year and the year before and the year before because it is always remembered as Karura's Deathday and never Gaara's Birthday) Temari goes up into the attic and unlocks the trunk that has been hidden in the corner for almost fifteen years. She is a jounin now, the first jounin kunoichi in Suna in almost nineteen years - _because it's my fault Mom quit_ - and she finally feels she has the right to open it.

There isn't much left. Her father ruined or hid most of it. There is a photograph of an academy graduation, and she can pick out her mother's eyes in the crowd of grinning twelve-year-olds. Her father is there too. She sees him and her heart skips. Then she chastises herself because there is no reason to be scared, because he never touched her or Kankurou or even Gaara, at least not himself. And then she remembers Yashamaru and she feels sick to her stomach, and looks away from the photograph.

There is a small knife taped to the side of the trunk, emblazoned with her mother's crest, a hawk, and she sheathes it and slips it into her obi. She carries it with her down the stairs with a photo album, which she and Kankurou pour over and Gaara observes quietly from the other side of the table. No one comments on the fact that there is no redhead in this family album.

Over dinner she gives Gaara a new album, one of photographs she has taken secretly (maybe not so secretly, judging by the look on Kankurou's face) and her favorite is the last one, where her arms are around both of her boys in front of Gaara's old house where he had been confined. It is old and derelict now. She thinks it is a sign.

* * *

**4. Old**

In the fairy tales it's always the eldest who fails first. It's the eldest who's always in the way. On their first mission after the chuunin exams and she gets caught by a Oto nin who has his arm around her throat and a kunai slipping into the skin on the top of her spine, she remembers this and almost cries.

In the fairy tales it's the middle child who is the stupidest, who goes down the wrong path even after hearing about the fate of the eldest, and that's what scares her because Kankurou only decides to become a shinobi after hearing about her own plans at five years old, and she prays-hopes-begs that following her won't lead to his death.

In the fairy tales it's always the youngest who is the most cunning, the one who always succeeds, and in some ways that's right. But it's also Gaara who stumbles the most, Gaara who falls the most, Gaara who lost everything, Gaara who destroyed everything, Gaara who clings so hard to an idea that might ruin them all, Gaara who's lonely, and at night she curls around her pillow and tries not to see the shadow dappling the rooftop across from their house, because even after everything she doesn't really know how to talk to him and it hurts, because _I am the eldest_ and _I should take care of them_.

But in the fairy tales, the heroine always has a sheet of golden hair, and now that she's older her hair almost fits that mold. Almost, but not quite.

She likes the almost-but-not-quite-ness of it, because it means that her mother could be wrong.

Because it means she has no more reason to believe in fairy tales.


	2. ii

_So. Yes. I have finished another part of _black cat_. I must say I'm actually liking it very much. More than I thought I would._

_Next part will be Gaara. 0.0 Pray for my mortal soul._

_iStat:_

_Chapter Title: N/A  
Chapter Word Count: 1,728 words (oh no I di'int, y'all)  
Chapter Rating: PG-14. Again. Yes.  
_

_Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. If I did, Kakashi and Anko would have babies with mad skillz by now._

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**black cat  
part ii  
by shu of the wind**

**

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**_Because fairy tales don't always come true._

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**1. Strings**

_Once upon a time, there were three siblings. _

Learning puppetry from Muhyo-sensei makes his fingers bleed.

He doesn't know how to control the charka strings in the beginning, and when he twists his hands the wrong way they slice into his skin and force him to wrap every finger in bandages, because it's cheaper than going to the healer for an obnoxiously expensive five-minute appointment to get some salve.

(Please. He can make better salve then the pricks at the hospital. Stuck on his own. In the middle of the desert. With nothing but spit and sand.)

_The first sibling was a girl, and the girl was a mistake._

The strings tangle around him if he steps wrong. They twist around his hands. The blood is dangerous because of his brother. _We're a team _and _I hate him_ and _I fear him_ and _this is sick but it has to be done_ run through his mind every time Gaara's eyes sharpen and he looks at Kankurou's hands with the tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth.

(He learns to control the bloodlust. Eventually. Not soon enough for Kankurou.)

_The second sibling was a useless fool, and his best friend was made of wood and needles and poison. _

Soon his hands-arms-legs-body are covered in thin scars, but he's learned the nuances of the strings and Muhyo-sensei is gruffly pleased when he leads him to the puppetry shed and lets him pick out his first real tool.

_The third sibling was a monster with a thirst for blood._

When Karura dies, the only thing he remembers later is the funeral. It isn't much of a one. The civilian dead are rarely buried in Suna; there isn't enough hard ground for it. He doesn't remember his father being there. There are dozens of people dressed in heavy black robes. They remind him of crows, and he nearly cries because of it, and Temari takes his hand for the first time ever because she is sniffing too and biting her lip hard enough for blood to well.

His uncle holds the pot of ashes that had been his mother close (_ashes and bone chips and Gaara all left behind, nothing more, nothing less_) and pours it out into the high wind, and it gleams silver and gray in the light. Then Yashamaru collapses, his strings cut, staring at his knees, and one of the crows around them loses a cloak. It flaps away with the ashes, and Temari whispers _she'll be warm in heaven now_ and he responds _what is heaven?_

_But the siblings were strong, and they realized that their father was wrong. So they ran away and lived happily ever after._

Temari bites her lip again and doesn't answer. They go to Yashamaru, and he puts his arms around both of them, and Kankurou doesn't know how to cry because he's not very good at it then and he's not very good at it later when he kills for the first time using the strings and arms of Karasu crushing and crushing and crushing until arms crack and a dying rattle escapes into the air.

His father controls them all with puppet strings, hidden ones, so skillfully blended with the air that no one can see them. Kankurou knows it. Temari knows it. Gaara knows it too. But they never mention it, not even after he is dead and Gaara is in the normal ranks and they are working so very hard to repair the damage the old Kazekage created.

Endless, endless plots. Endless, endless victims. So many strands of pain.

_Or not_.

**

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2. Foil

Kankurou introduces them to dark chocolate, which he finds one day in Konohagakure just before the chuunin exams officially begin. He buys it from a vending machine, bored with a few coins jangling in his pocket, and he decides it is probably the best thing he has ever tasted because of the bitterness mixed in with the sweet. It's wrapped in paper and gold foil, which he stuffs in his pocket before offering Temari a piece in their room later, as they talk about the plan to overthrow Hi no Kuni.

(Gaara doesn't like sweet and would probably suspect poison anyway.)

The next time he visits Konoha he visits the same vending machine and buys that same chocolate again, and he's halfway done unwrapping it when he senses Gaara behind him, quiet, strangely calm after the battles they have just been through.

Neither say anything. But Kankurou offers him a piece of it because it's sharper than he remembers, and Gaara takes it. Sniffs it cautiously. Bites it.

He obviously hates it.

But he's trying.

They're both trying.

That's what matters.

**

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**

3. Resurrection

His favorite stories are about Akasuna no Sasori, when he is little and he is curled around Temari because she is the big sister who helps him through the night terrors and has his back and always-always-always is there.

(She is much smaller than he is now, and it almost scares him, even though she's the same old cow she's always been.)

(She's still the eldest and she thinks it makes her stupid. He tells her he's the stupid one. She smacks him for it. And then she hugs him, and he doesn't quite understand why.)

The story is one of the exploits of the Puppetry Corps, before Sasori defected and vanished, and it tells of the famous puppets that haunt his dreams, Crow and Salamander and the Black Ant.

_I'll have puppets like those._ He always tells her at the end of the story (after complaining it was crap 'cause she can't tell a story worth one of Gaara's dead bodies and she knows it but smacks him anyway). _I'll use those puppets._

He knows when he decides to enroll at the Academy that it frightens her, because even though she is an upperclassman and knows way more about the life of a ninja than he does, he knows enough already from his father that it scares him too.

He doesn't remember his mother. He wonders if this is an important thing.

He chooses Karasu. Obviously. It was Sasori's favorite tool before he left. It's Kankurou's favorite tool now. Karasu is his companion, almost his invisible friend, and when no one else is around he speaks to the puppet because it can give him something no one else does.

Temari doesn't do it because she's scared he'll die. He can see that at five and he can see that at fourteen, and all the times in between when Gaara goes nuts.

Yashamaru doesn't do it because Yashamaru is a bastard and ignores them both to take care of their mother's murderer. And then when he turns against the brat he fails and gets destroyed. And Gaara's forced into their life again.

Gaara doesn't do it because he's a homicidal maniac most of the time. After Uzumaki, he's a _reformed_ homicidal maniac, but all that means is that he holds back on the creepy grins and keeps himself from crushing some random hapless bystander, and has the emotional and social maturity of an infant tortoise.

And his dad doesn't do it because he's not only dead, but when he is alive he's a bastard and Kankurou really can't stand him.

(_Your sister is useless out in the academy. I keep meaning to get her home._)

(_What's the point of using puppets? They're useless once they're broken and then what? You're vulnerable. You're a wreck. You're useless. Work on your ninjutsu instead._)

(_Don't mention that monster in front of me._)

He can remember the story of the Talking Puppet. _A long time ago, there was once a puppeteer who crafted a puppet of such intricacy, with so much love, that it came to life…_ And even though he knows that that could never happen, he contemplates it at odd times.

So Karasu is there, and Karasu listens, and even though Kankurou knows that Karasu is a puppet (_has no soul_) (_isn't alive_) (_for God's sake, you're a freak, get some friends already_) it's the puppet that he can talk to, and sometimes he almost feels like the puppet can talk back.

He knows it's strange.

It just is.

It's not like it really matters anyway.

It's not like the story will ever come true.

**

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**

4. purple

When you graduate from the lower grades of the Puppet Corps and become a mid-ranked puppeteer (_lion instead of cub, raptor instead of chick_) you win the right to the traditional face- paint of the Corps.

Kankurou puts it on at ten years old, and the only person who wears it younger than that is Sasori, and he no longer likes the heroic stories about Sasori because he's heard too many stories based in fact.

Temari calls him 'lady' a few times, and he laughs it off, because he's proud of it and he knows she's proud of it too, and Gaara doesn't count because Gaara's still a murderer and he and Temari are the siblings here, and not Gaara.

While Gaara is fighting through the normal ranks of shinobi, after the Uchiha escapes, and Kankurou graduates to the second level of puppeteer, he changes the style of face-paint and looks at himself in the mirror. And then he calls both Temari and Gaara and paints them, because he wants to show that he cares for them both. Gaara says it tastes like some sort of fruit, and Temari spits a few times and makes Kankurou mess up the stroke over the nose, but they take a photograph of it afterwards and Kankurou doesn't care that it's against Puppet Corp rules because it's priceless to see that expression on Gaara's face, _especially_ when there's purple paint in his hair.

Just. Priceless.

And afterwards, he watches them both (Temari trying to bicker, Gaara ignoring, and there's still paint in his hair and nobody's told him) and he wonders about the book of fairy tales that Temari keeps pouring over. Because really, it's kind of stupid.

Their lives are real, not fairy tales.

Their lives are chocolate and blood and death and paint and puppets in the corner.

And that's what really matters here.

(_Not anything else_.)


	3. iii

_This one is short. For some reason it worked out that way. Also, it's lighter than the other two. Maybe I was too angsty before...I don't know...TT_TT_

_There may be a fourth chapter. I haven't decided yet._

_iStat  
Chapter Title: N/A  
Chapter Word Count: 933  
Chapter Rating: T. It's Gaara. Duh._

_Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. If I did, Gaara and Sakura would be together, Sasuke would be in FairyLand, Madara would shrivel and break like the mummy he is, and Itachi and Jiraiya would not be dead._

**

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black cat  
part iii

  
**by shu of the wind**

_

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_

_Because we are stronger than fairy tales._

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**

1. Tally

He is good at wounding. He is almost as good at wounding as he is at killing, and it's the killing that he likes better, but wounding has its own sort of appeal.

But he doesn't do it often because the call of blood is so strong.

He hasn't counted how many people he's killed, for legitimate reasons or non-legitimate ones. Sometimes he tries to remember how many, and then by the time he gets to his fifth birthday he can't do it any longer, because he is five when Yashamaru breaks him forever.

But he doesn't do it often because the need to forget is so strong.

He's no longer called a monster, but he never outwardly agrees. Because monsters don't change, and no matter how he acts and what he looks like and how he speaks, he is still a monster, even when the monster inside of him is gone. And when he sleeps he wakes in a terror-sweat that Shukaku is still there and the sand will crave blood and he will kill again.

But he never lets anyone see it because he doesn't want to die.

And one day he finds out that Temari sliced a mark on the wooden underside of her cot for every man or woman or child he killed, and she counts them up one day and tells him, point-blank.

_Two-hundred-thirty-three._

(_You had better make it up to them._)

It's less and more than he thought it would be.

**

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2. Borderline

He thinks sometimes that if it weren't for his brother and sister he would still be insane.

It was, of course, Naruto who screamed the actual wake-up call, but it was Temari and Kankurou who picked up the pieces of his shattered being and tried to fit them back together again in a way that almost resembled normalcy. They reached out and they cajoled and bullied and helped and loved as best as they could, and it's probably thanks to their tireless efforts that he's as close to normal as he actually is.

It's not like he _isn't _insane, even two-four-six-eight years after everything. No matter how long he lives, no matter how much freedom he can relish after his return from death and the theft of Shukaku, the impulses are too ingrained for him to ever really change. He's better at hiding it, better at controlling it, but sometimes at the back of his mind he almost regrets the change, because the way he used to live meant no real guilt, no real pain, and no need to protect others.

And then he gets angry at himself, because the things he almost regrets are the things that he fought so hard to have (_to be able to feel_) and he wants them _(needs them_) more than he would ever admit.

**

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3. Letters

Sometimes Gaara wonders what he wanted to be as a child.

He doesn't really remember anything from before he turned six, which was when Yashamaru died. Nothing except this constant feeling of rejection, and the vaguest hope that someday it would be different. There's a memory attached to that, he knows, that has the answer, but he always stops just short of trying to remember.

After all, what if it's different than what he is now?

Would he regret it?

Would he enjoy it?

Questions to be answered.

Questions better ignored.

**

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**

4. Quintet

It's Kankurou's fault that Temari starts dating Nara Shikamaru, and it's Gaara's fault that Kankurou starts dating Yamanaka.

After all, neither thing would have happened if Kankurou hadn't suggested that Temari become the liaison between Konoha and Suna during the Chuunin Exams.

And if Gaara had never thought to replace a strangely giggly Temari with a taciturn Kankurou, then the obnoxious blonde would have never shown up except in his nightmares.

(So in a twisted way, it's his fault in both scenarios - for agreeing to send Temari and then deciding to send Kankurou. This is irritating.)

He's happy (in a way) (not really) (he's still possessive and after all, these sorts of relationships are outright thefts of his property) to see his siblings as happy as they are. He's quite certain that though he never says a word against either of the Konoha nin, his brother and sister are quite aware of his displeasure.

_Relationships between Villages never work._

_One of you will have to desert or step down from active duty. Are you willing to do that? Either of you?_

_Where would you live?_

_Why are you leaving me?_

Of course, all those thoughts stayed silent. He would have been ashamed to think them in the first place, if 'shame' had ever really been a part of his vocabulary.

No. That wasn't quite true. He was ashamed of a lot of things. (_I don't see either of you as my siblings._) (_Blood on his hands, in his mouth, through his hair._) (_Shukaku in his ear late at night as he shoots awake and remembers that the thing no longer exists, but he still shakes and wonders if sleep is really worth it._) He just refuses to think about them most of the time.

Sometimes his disapproval of the relationships is almost palpable, which is why when Temari catches him being dragged along by a crazy medic on a mission, she smirks and melts into the wall.

He'll get it later. He knows it.

For some reason he can no longer really work up the energy to care.


End file.
